He pursues the same strain in that delightful book of his, DeVita Solitaria, which seems to have given Zimmerman the idea of his celebrated work on Solitude.  It is the secondary and indirect character of the love of seclusion to which Chamfort alludes in the following passage, couched in his sarcastic vein:  On dit quelquefois d’un homme qui vit seul, il n’aime pas la societe.  C’est souvent comme si on disait d’un homme qu’il n’aime pas la promenade, sous le pretexte qu’il ne se promene pas volontiers le soir dans le foret de Bondy.

You will find a similar sentiment expressed by the Persian poet Sadi, in his Garden of Roses.  Since that time, he says, we have taken leave of society, preferring the path of seclusion; for there is safety in solitude.  Angelus Silesius,[1] a very gentle and Christian writer, confesses to the same feeling, in his own mythical language.  Herod, he says, is the common enemy; and when, as with Joseph, God warns us of danger, we fly from the world to solitude, from Bethlehem to Egypt; or else suffering and death await us!—­

Herodes ist ein Feind; der Joseph der Verstand, Dem machte Gott die Gefahr im Traum (in Geist) bekannt; Die Welt ist Bethlehem, Aegypten Einsamkeit, Fleuch, meine Seele! fleuch, sonst stirbest du vor Leid.

[Footnote 1:  Translator’s Note.  Angelus Silesius, pseudonym for Johannes Scheffler, a physician and mystic poet of the seventeenth century (1624-77).]

Giordano Bruno also declares himself a friend of seclusion. Tanti uomini, he says, che in terra hanno voluto gustare vita celeste, dissero con una voce, “ecce elongavi fugiens et mansi in solitudine”—­those who in this world have desired a foretaste of the divine life, have always proclaimed with one voice: 

  Lo! then would I wander far off;
  I would lodge in the wilderness.[1]

[Footnote 1:  Psalms, lv. 7.]

And in the work from which I have already quoted, Sadi says of himself:  In disgust with my friends at Damascus, I withdrew into the desert about Jerusalem, to seek the society of the beasts of the field.  In short, the same thing has been said by all whom Prometheus has formed out of better clay.  What pleasure could they find in the company of people with whom their only common ground is just what is lowest and least noble in their own nature—­the part of them that is commonplace, trivial and vulgar?  What do they want with people who cannot rise to a higher level, and for whom nothing remains but to drag others down to theirs? for this is what they aim at.  It is an aristocratic feeling that is at the bottom of this propensity to seclusion and solitude.

Rascals are always sociable—­more’s the pity! and the chief sign that a man has any nobility in his character is the little pleasure he takes in others’ company.  He prefers solitude more and more, and, in course of time, comes to see that, with few exceptions, the world offers no choice beyond solitude on one side and vulgarity on the other.  This may sound a hard thing to say; but even Angelus Silesius, with all his Christian feelings of gentleness and love, was obliged to admit the truth of it.  However painful solitude may be, he says, be careful not to be vulgar; for then you may find a desert everywhere:—­